Results for "nasa"

NASA has caught a vast solar eruption - huge outpourings of energy from the sun, exploding at 1.5 million miles per hour - on camera in unprecedented detail, taking advantage of a new satellite. IRIS, or the Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph, was launched back in June 2013 on a mission to document activity in the lowest levels of the sun's atmosphere, and the new footage - which you can see after the cut - is the first time it has spotted a coronal mass ejection.

Exercising is an important part of daily life, more so for astronauts than us gravity-bound folk. To ensure those aboard the International Space Station get exercise that is both extensive and of adequate quality, the space agency has developed a pair of sandals called ForceShoes that are able to measure load.

NASA's pogoing Morpheus spacecraft has been showing off its nighttime landing skills, putting Google's self-driving car to shame by showing how the unmanned pod could set down autonomously on a distant planet. The test was the first time Morpheus had used its self-piloting descent system at night, proving the technology would work even in situations where the surface of a planet or moon might not be visible to the naked eye.

NASA's perpetual funding problems have been summed up satirically by The Onion, with the tongue-in-cheek article coming as the space agency renews its push to get more young people involved in STEM. Quoting made-up counsellors at NASA Space Camp, the satire news site plays on the constantly shrinking budget and how that has hamstrung projects and continues to dampen the possibility of things like manned missions to Mars.

A never-before-seen meteor shower could put on a dramatic show in the night sky tonight, NASA has advised, with the May Camelopardalids potentially featuring more than 200 meteors each hour. The result of periodic comet 209P/LINEAR, the predicted meteor shower is actually the result of a long-ago flyby in the 1800s, during which time it left streams of dust trailing it. Read on for how you could see it yourself.

The Internet is full of selfies, and with them NASA created a massive work of art: a rendition of the Earth made from 36,000 selfies, each having it own little slot in the digital version of our world. Every selfie is a single pixel in the image.

NASA's manned mission to Mars could take a MacGyver approach to the flight home, potentially relying on oxygen extracted from the red planet's own atmosphere to support crew both during the mission and on the return journey. Dubbed in-situ resource utilization (ISRU), the strategy could mean a very different approach to mission design, particularly when it comes to the planned 2020 robotic rover NASA intends to send to Mars.

The classical saucer-shaped UFO is the stuff of lore, being cited by many as a vessel for yet-undiscovered alien life. In the future, it could be our own flying saucers spotted zipping around space, with NASA working on its own saucer-shaped vehicle.

NASA has been challenged to come up with a way to use the International Space Station without relying on the Russians, as US lawmakers grow concerned that access to the orbiting research platform could be cut off amid sanction threats. Russia proposed effectively locking NASA out of the ISS earlier this week, after the US blocked high-tech exports as a sales scolding for allegedly supporting Crimean unrest.

Glacial melting in the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is past the point of no return, NASA has revealed, with research spanning forty years indicating there's now nothing we can do to prevent their demise. The study, carried out in collaboration with the University of California, Irvine, makes ominous predictions about just how significantly the water currently frozen in the ice sheets will contribute to rising sea levels: enough in total, NASA says, to bring the global sea level up by four feet.